Forrester just released a new survey, one that begs the question: Who paid for this rubbish?

I generally like Forrester's work, but this survey flies in the face of every piece of research on open source that I've seen in the last five years...including research from Forrester. Also, as the research itself finds, often its survey respondents are using open source even when they don't know it: Nearly half of those surveyed by Forrester who are using open-source frameworks (e.g., Spring) still claim they are not using open source.

Forrester's newest research finds:

Seventy percent of decision-makers responded that they don't have interest or have no plans to adopt open-source software;

Only 23 percent of respondents said expanding their use of open-source software was a priority;

Security is the main concern around adopting open-source software. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said it was an important or very important concern.

In a survey of Red Hat's customers (surely comprising a majority of those surveyed in Forrester's questionable survey above), 86 percent of JBoss users declared it capable of meeting their most demanding workloads.

And so on. I have other research from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, IDC, and others that tells much the same story: Open-source adoption is growing at a frenetic pace at every level of the software stack. Security is often cited as one of its chief benefits. It's not that open-source software is by nature secure, but rather that for credible vendors of open source the software's transparency makes it easier to spot and fix vulnerabilities.

Having said this, even in negative, perhaps wholly inaccurate findings, there is still room for open source to improve. If, in fact, enterprises are holding back on open-source adoption due to the reasons below, then this is a revenue opportunity for commercial open-source vendors:

Forrester Research

There is more adoption than Forrester notes. Much more. But perhaps we'd see even more if we did a better job of marketing the security benefits around open source, the cost benefits around open source, the support and TCO benefits around open source, etc.

One thing I wanted to clarify because you make a couple references in the post to the study being "paid for" or sponsored by a vendor. The survey was not sponsored - the data came from our Enterprise and SMB Software Survey, North America and Europe, Q3 2007, which was a completely independent Forrester study and one of the largest enterprise/SMB surveys we conduct on an annual basis.

All of which makes the data even more confusing, since it doesn't jibe with any other surveys/research I've seen in the past few years...including from Forrester.

About the author

Matt Asay is chief operating officer at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, Matt was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, an open-source applications company. Matt brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay.
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